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For Mali amputee, Islamic extremist legacy lingers

Issa Alzouma, 39, poses in front of his home in Gao, Northern Mali, Thursday Jan. 31, 2013. Alzouma's arm was amputated by Islamist radicals on Dec. 21, 2012, after being charged by the Islamic tribunal of spying. Alzouma, a father of three, denied the charges, and said he was just changing the faulty plug on his motorcycle's engine alongside the road. Islamist extremists fled the city Saturday as French, Chadian and Nigerien troops arrived, ending 10 month of radical Islamic control over the city.(AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

GAO, Mali (AP) — The Islamic extremists in Mali came to Issa Alzouma's cell and brought him out to the public square they had renamed Place de Shariah. They laid him out, tying down his arms and legs before amputating his right hand and forearm with a knife.

"I passed out from the pain," the 39-year-old father of three recalled, the stump, just below his elbow, still wrapped in gauze more than a month later. "The next thing I knew I was in the hospital."

Alzouma still carries the worn, folded piece of paper he was given upon his discharge from the hospital in December after five days there. Diagnosis: Amputation, it says.

The northern Malian town of Gao has been celebrating the departure of the Islamic radicals after nearly 10 months in power. But the French military intervention that caused the armed jihadists to flee came too late for Alzouma and the other men who lost their hands and probably their livelihoods, too, when the militants carried out amputations as punishments for theft and other alleged crimes under their strict interpretation of Shariah, or Islamic law.

Alzouma, the last prisoner in Gao whose hand was chopped off, doesn't know how he will support his wife and three children. He used to dig for gravel for a living.

"Even for men with two hands, there is no work to be found," he says, sitting on a mat inside his thatched hut in a sand-blanketed neighborhood of Gao as children outside played, tossing a foam sandal around as a toy.

When the Islamic extremists first took over Gao last April, Alzouma says they talked about Islam and the importance of being a good Muslim. Only later, he says, did they start imposing their strict rule.

At first, they told people that cigarettes were bad and that they shouldn't smoke. Then women were told not to go out into the streets alone. Only later did they begin whipping those who went out in public without a veil. In total, they carried out nine amputations in Gao, residents say, and several others in the nearby town of Ansongo.

In November, Alzouma was traveling by motorcycle between his home village and Gao when the jihadists arrested him and accused him of espionage. Alzouma denied it, and said he had been lingering on the road only because he was changing a faulty plug on his motorcycle's engine. Later, the extremists said witnesses had seen him breaking into a nearby store.

He says there was no trial. A neighbor later came by their home to tell his wife Fatimata that his hand had been cut off.

How would she explain to their 7-year-old son Ousmane why his father had no hand, she wanted to know. When they went to visit him in the hospital, Ousmane cried at the sight of his father's bandaged stump.

After his amputation, Alzouma bought his wife a veil with the donations they'd received. She only wore it once to the market, she says, before the French-led mission ousted the Islamic rebels. Today, she wraps her head in a teal-colored cloth and notes that she is pressed more than ever to leave the family's hut.

Tiny but resilient, Fatimata now bears the weight of responsibility for their family's future, packaging charcoal in plastic bags to sell for income. The jihadists wanted to keep women in the home but ironically the amputation has changed the dynamic of gender roles, with Fatimata now going out to work while he stays home recuperating and helping watch over the children. A teary 2-year-old Modibo clings to his side.

Alzouma cannot afford pain medication. He returns every 10 days to the hospital to have his dressing changed. He hopes that one day he can get a prosthesis that will give him back some functionality. He knows, though, he will not be able to dig gravel as he did before.

"Each day when I pray I ask God 'What can I do to survive? How can I support my family?'" he says.

The militants said they cut off his hand in accordance with Islamic law. Alzouma, though, says to subject him and his children to a life of poverty is not in accordance with his faith.

"They said they were Muslims, but they are not," he said. "They are criminals."